Apple becomes world's first trillion-dollar company

Apple Inc. on Thursday became the first USA company to surpass $1 trillion in market value, underscoring the iPhone maker's explosive growth and its role in the technology industry's ascent to the forefront of the global economy and markets.

Apple's shares gained $5.89 to close at $207.39, leaving the company's market value a notch above $1 trillion - around $1,001,679,220,000, according to FactSet. "If you look at a trillion dollars, that's about 5 percent of the US economy". As a company gets bigger, its growth rate tends to slow down. Since Cook became CEO, Apple's annual revenue has more than doubled to $229 billion while its stock has quadrupled.

Traders said prices rallied when industry information provider Genscape reported crude inventories at the Cushing, Oklahoma, delivery hub for us crude, dropped 1.1 million barrels since Friday, July 27.

But there's no law against a company being worth more than $1 trillion.

Hot on Apple's heels is Amazon.com, the second-largest listed USA company by market value, at around $880 billion, closely followed by Google-owner Alphabet and by Microsoft. A company's market value is calculated by multiplying its current share price by the total number of shares investors hold.

In Apple's case, the outlook certainly looks bright.

Since the iPhone first went on sale in 2007, Apple shares have soared by 1,100% and have jumped nearly a third in the past year. It's a trend the analyst expects to continue to accelerate through next year and beyond.

"Based on a recently adjusted outstanding share count of 4,829,926,000 shares, a stock price of $207.05 nudged Apple over the finish line in the race to $1 trillion". Apple became part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a widely used measure of stock prices, in 2015. So much for the theory that the iPhone X was too expensive.

Apple took advantage of that break to bring back virtually all of its overseas cash, triggering a $38 billion tax bill.

"Our view on tariffs is they show up as a tax on the consumer and wind up resulting in lower economic growth; and sometimes can bring about significant risk of unintended outcome", Cook said during an earnings call.

Although many have doubted Apple's staying power over the years, unlike many hardware makers the company has ridden the elegance and functionality of its devices.